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(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) House Speaker Paul Ryan defends the GOP tax plan on Capitol Hill on November 7, 2017. trickle-downers.jpg E very tax plan has winners and losers, and the House Republican tax plan is no different. The wealthy continue to prosper and the middle class gets the scraps. Everyone else? “The losers are going to lose badly,” says the Center for American Progress’s tax expert Seth Hanlon. But what happens if Trump’s strongest supporters are the losers losing badly? A Voter Study Group/Democracy Fund report published earlier this year identified five distinct groups of Trump voters. Trump and the GOP risk alienating two groups with their proposed tax plan, the “American Preservationists” and the “Free Marketeers,” who together make up 45 percent of the president’s base. According to the study, the “American Preservationists” are mostly made up of white working-class Americans, Trump’s core constituency. This group is the poorest of his supporters: More than half...

AP Photo/Steve Helber People cheer during a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam in Richmond T ime was short, and the activists knew it. Crowded into a small living room, they listened intently as an organizer explained which doors to knock on and what words to say. The three-story home, located in Virginia’s wealthy Stafford County, a Washington suburb, had been converted into a de facto headquarters for Democratic volunteers in the area, hosting canvass launches for various candidates. They would be spending the day going after likely Democratic voters, attempting to turn out the party’s base. “We all know what happens when Democrats don’t vote,” Jennifer Carroll Foy, a candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates, told the volunteers. “We cannot feel those same feelings that we felt on November 9, last year: horror, frustration, hopelessness.” Alarmed by Donald Trump’s surprise victory, a wave of first-time candidates, eager volunteers and...

AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File Council of Economic Advisors Chair Kevin Hassett trickle-downers_35.jpg O ne of the biggest obstacles standing between Donald Trump and his plan to drastically cut corporate taxes is the opinion of the American public. Corporate tax cuts, though a key part of the administration’s proposed tax reform package, also happen to be a particularly controversial one. And with recent surveys showing that a majority of Americans remains skeptical of lowering taxes on corporations, hawking big corporate tax cuts to the public presents the GOP with a challenge. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisors stepped up to the plate on Monday, releasing a report that claimed that cutting the corporate tax from 35 to 20 percent could give American workers a pay raise as high as $9,000, once the economy has fully adapted to the change. Corporate tax cuts mean higher after-tax profits. In theory, these profits could be used to fund new investments, which would presumably...

Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin speaks at a press briefing at the Hilton Midtown hotel during the United Nations General Assembly. trickle-downers_35.jpg A fter the populist surge that put Donald Trump in the White House, Steve Mnuchin tried to rebrand himself as a man of the people. He promised that as treasury secretary that he would unburden the working class and that the rich shouldn’t expect any sort of preferential treatment. Many observers were very skeptical of these promises—and for good reason. Appearing on Meet the Press this week, Mnuchin had been tasked with defending the Republicans’ new tax framework . But he couldn’t really explain it. Mnuchin repeated like a mantra that the “objective” of the tax plan was a “middle-income tax cut” and not a tax cut for the wealthy. Given that he had few real details to offer, Mnuchin could avoid both making promises and giving straight answers, while doubling down on his own dubious...

Chris Radburn/Press Association via AP Images S tudent loan-servicing companies are an underappreciated part of a debt-for-diploma system that has badly failed college students and graduates. The loans themselves are a mix of direct federal loans, state loans, and private ones guaranteed by the government, but virtually all payments are collected by loan servicers. These companies, as for-profit middlemen, can pile on unnecessary costs to indebted students and steer them to act against their own self-interest. The Obama administration sought to rein in abuses, issuing policy guidelines for loan servicers and allowing relief for students who were misled by for-profit colleges—but stopped short of formally regulating the loan-servicing industry. Earlier this year, the largest of the nine loan-servicing companies, Navient Corp, formerly part of lender Sallie Mae, became the target of lawsuits from consumers, state attorneys general, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)...